Chapter 9

  "This is clearly evidence of a murder." I looked up from a handful of crow feathers on the path heading toward the shore. It wasn't my first murder pun, and it was likely far from my last.

  "This is why you don't have any friends other than me." Joan huffed as she walked past, unwilling to give me any credibility.

  "So you're saying you're my friend?" Teasing Joan, I hopped up and tagged along behind, not unlike a puppy.

  "I question my life choices every time you open your mouth, Clay. For someone who claims to have social anxiety, you sure go out of your way to annoy everyone around you." Her raised eyebrow let me know that her question was not entirely rhetorical.

  To be honest, it had been something I'd wondered about myself for quite some time. The thought of leaving my bedroom would bring me crippling terror on many days. More than a few times, I would go days without eating because I was afraid to run into someone (anyone) while getting groceries. If delivery people didn't have a contactless delivery option, I would ignore them when ordering takeout. I had lost my previous job for avoiding face-to-face interactions with customers. Just thinking of everything caused the chill of an impending panic attack crawling up my spine.

  On the flip side, when I found myself in public, I would ramble incessantly like a maniac. Common sense would say that I would only ever hide in the corner quietly. But instead, my brain committed social sabotage every time I found myself in public settings. Pop cultural references, bad puns, annoyingly energetic outbursts, I fell back on the same bag of tricks.

  My counselor had given two possible reasons for my behavior. The first was that my anxiety was triggering a fight or flight response, and my outbursts were the social version of a fight response. The other possibility was the more pitiful of the two, but also the one I felt was most likely the reason. Due to trauma over losing friends over the course of my life, I used my over-the-top behavior as a sort of unconscious way of vetting the people around me. It was less the idea that I was sabotaging, but instead I was weeding out the ones who were most likely to hurt me before they had to get a chance to get close to me. If I had two options, I'd always pick the one that implied my lack of trust in the people around me.

  Ironically, even with my supposed vetting, I'd managed to be hurt by the two people closest to me. I even sucked at scaring off social predators. I was the absolute worst.

  Since coming here to this eldritch clusterfuck of a world, it felt as if my defense mechanism had been in complete overdrive. To anyone around me, I must have looked completely unhinged. I'd make Sonny the Coco Puffs mascot seem well grounded compared to my outbursts. Perhaps it was due to being forced into a situation where I was surrounded by nothing but new faces. Perhaps it was because I was still dealing with trauma from the horror that Stacy and Kyle put me through, and I was overcompensating. Perhaps it was because acting a little unhinged is normal when everything wants to kill you. Most likely it was whichever combination was most embarrassing for me.

  "So if I sent a bunch crows to a mental institution, would I be committing a murder?" I leapt in front of the trio of party members posing as if I just told the best joke of all time. Raif accidentally bumped into me with his extremely extended elbows. Joan groaned while trying to walk past, not just pretending she didn't hear me, but doing her best to erase it from her memory. Tara simply stared at me and shook her head. Tara's hurt the worst because she used some of the only social interaction since joining the party to critique my humor.

  Surprisingly, Raif had remained fairly quiet. Where normally he'd have snapped at me more than a couple times on our short walk from the town to the beach, he had mostly tried to ignore me. It actually seemed as if his mind was focused on other things, but I didn't know him well enough to even attempt to guess what they were. If I could strike up a conversation, I was sure I'd be able to uncover what was on his mind, but the thought of having an unnecessary conversation with Raif was enough of a nudge to get me to mind my own damned business.

  "We aren't sure exactly what we're looking for, so just keep your eyes peeled for anything strange." Joan used my unpopularity to take the lead. I was grateful since the two new party members had caused my mind to wander all over the place.

  "Have you ever seen so many murders in one place?" All three party members turned with a similar glare. Only Joan had the red outline, letting me know I should probably stop. I was actually surprised how Raif had yet to trigger my Read the Room ability. Maybe he was much more mild-mannered than he appeared.

  As the others did their best to create some distance, looked out over the shoreline. There was a small beach directly in front of me. To the right a few hundred yards away was the main harbor where a large number of fishing boats were docked. On the left there was a light house sitting on top of a raised area of land, surrounded by cliffs. It dawned on me that although this town was called Marblehead, I had no way of knowing if it was an accurate portrayal of the real place, or if that god just threw some generic assets into a map template and settled for the result. If I had to guess, it was the latter option.

  While in town, we had noticed the ridiculously high concentration of crows. Now that we were at the beach, I realized what a ridiculously high concentration of crows really looked like. The only way I would have had to wade through more black-clad figures would be if this had been a Dashboard Confessional concert. I mean, I would assume. I wasn't big on crowds, so I just had to use my imagination for stuff like that.

  The crowded state of the beach wasn't the only striking observation. Since coming to this new world, I was currently faced with the loudest environment by a wide margin. It was as if every crow was desperately trying to talk over each other, I felt like I was watching a bird version of when Uncle Hank brought up politics at Thanksgiving dinner. Just like that horrible Thanksgiving dinner, I had nobody to ask to pass me the green bean casserole, although that was significantly more understandable in this situation. Green bean casserole sounded amazing right now. It dawned on me that I hadn't had anything to eat today, and it still hadn't been 24 hours since Joan's last batch of ramen was made, so I'd have to wait for my +5 buffs to get replaced. As long as I wasn't mauled by crows, I was confident I'd be safe until we could have a feast on instant noodles.

  After being lost in thought, I glanced to my left, surprised to find Tara. I had no idea how long she had been silently scanning the shoreline with me, but I didn't mind the company. Raif was a ways away, chasing crows and kicking at them to clear spots on the beach. I'm not sure if it was a strategy for investigation or if he would literally implode if he didn't attempt to inflict violence on any creature he saw. Joan had distanced herself from the group, deep in her own investigation.

  "It's a sound byte."

  It took me a moment to realize where the quiet voice had come from. I had only heard a handful of words from Tara, and since she had been looking in silence I'd forgotten she could speak.

  "What do you mean?" I hadn't actually caught what she'd said the first time, but I was too embarrassed to admit it, so instead I just acted like I was confused by her statement. If she had said something obvious, I would have ended up embarrassing myself pretty bad, but luckily that wasn't the case.

  "The crow noises. It's all a sound byte. The same one, repeated over and over, tons of them stacked on top of each other. It's all the same. It's the sort of thing a composer or sound designer might do to create anxiety in a project they are working on."

  I tried to focus on the seemingly chaotic cacophony of the crows. What at first had seemed like unique sounds from each crow slowly unveiled itself as something that was much more manufactured than natural.

  "In this case, I think you're giving that god too much credit. I think he just copied and pasted the same sound byte out of sheer laziness."

  Tara's eyes met mine as she nodded to my theory. I thought she might say something further, but it was clear she was holding back.

  "But let's say there's some intention in this being the same sound byte stacked chaotically on itself..." I offered to nudge her forward. Her knowledge of crows had been instrumental in bringing us to this point, so I genuinely respected her insight.

  "It's not chaotic."

  "It's not?" I did my best to listen, but the sound was overwhelming. I liked music quite a bit, but too much seemingly random noise had a tendency to become overwhelming. I had more than a couple of panic attacks that were triggered by loud social environments not entirely dissimilar to this beach of crows. Beach of Crows, that sounds like a band, I wonder if it's actually a band already. If it's not, maybe Tara, Joan, and I could form a band. I'd be lead kazoo.

  "It's a very complex polyrhythm. But it's not random."

  The emptiness between her green eyes faded the more she talked. By her outward appearance it would be easy to think she was more focused on her music from a point of attitude, a punk in the sense of fighting against establishment. In my very limited understanding, in music it meant creating based on feel instead of established theory. But making the assumption that Tara was a self-taught musician who played only by instinct would be a gross misunderstanding. She was much more educated than she appeared at first glance, in many aspects, but most concentrated in the area of music. I'd called her a genius for her murder realization, but I didn't realize how accurate my compliment had been. It wasn't just being polite to give Tara the title of genius, calling her a genius was just a statement of fact. Like calling the Tardis bigger on the inside, calling Tara a genius was not an opinion, but a fact.

  "You're really amazing, do you know that?" The words escaped my lips before I realized I was saying anything. I might have been willing to make annoying jokes constantly, but actual genuine sentimental observations were embarrassing as hell for me.

  Terrified of Tara's response, the one response I didn't expect was the one she delivered. She looked confused, like what I had stated couldn't possibly be a reality.

  "I don't really get all of your jokes. Like this one."

  I honestly didn't know how to respond. It was clear her response wasn't about being humble, she couldn't internalize my compliment being true. All I could think in that moment is That's sad.

  "I'm like the boy who cried wolf. The one time I'm not trying to make a joke, nobody believes me. It's ok... It's my fault." I rambled, realizing it would be a challenge getting her to acknowledge my awe of her mind. "So... Do the polyrhythms mean anything? I don't even know what a polyrhythm is, I mean I could kind of guess by the name, but it doesn't mean anything to me."

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  "I can't figure it out. It might be a code, but all I can tell is that the frequency of overlap is higher to the left. The crows on the right have more complex polyrhythms, but they gradually merge the further down the beach to the left you go."

  "That's almost like..." Was the solution this easy? If it was a puzzle, Tara's observation made it so obvious. "It's pointing us toward the lighthouse. Like if you're tuning into a radio station, the further you go from the station, the more messed up the sound is. In this case, maybe it's not the sound that's messed up but the rhythms? So the radio station in this case is the lighthouse?"

  Tara smiled and nodded. "Your example isn't perfect, but I think you're right. The complexity or even the dissonance is higher if you move away from whatever is to the left. It would make sense it's the light house since it's an obvious landmark, but I wouldn't know for sure unless we get closer. The crow sound bytes should almost overlap at the spot we're looking for, if your theory is correct."

  "Woah! Tara, you're giving me way too much credit. You do realize this is all you, right? I just made some sort of analogy about a radio. It was your ears and understanding of music that figured any of this out." My arms waved doing my best to deny any part in her discovery. Even if she was way off base, her thinking was impressive.

  "I don't get it. Are you making fun of me?" My attempts to recognize her contribution backfired completely. Instead, she looked at me as if I had called her worthless or stupid.

  Out of anyone, I was the least qualified to diffuse this misunderstanding. Even if I understood her response came from trauma, I was nowhere near confident in my ability to untangle her web of insecurities.

  "I trust your theory. Let's investigate together, okay?"

  Her face returned to its normal neutral state, only the slightest trace of a smile showed itself as a subtle twitch on the corner of her mouth.

  "You want me to come along?"

  "If nothing else, I need your ears. I can't hear what you can. That's a fact."

  She looked into my eyes for a few seconds, doing her best to read me. Eventually, she must have decided she believed I was telling the truth.

  "I'll help."

  "Lead the way. Just follow everything to the source. I'll by right behind you."

  Slowly, Tara made her way down the beach with me a couple steps behind. Every dozen steps or so, she'd stop and get her bearings before continuing. I couldn't hear the difference in the noise at all, yet she was following it like an expert hunter trailing their prey. I was glad that she was so focused, because it meant there was nowhere for me to put my foot in my mouth by failing at compliments. At some point, our other party members joined us.

  "What do you think you're doing? You think you can just go off alone with my girl? You're lucky I don't just beat the shit out of you right now. I swear I'll..."

  Raif was cut off by Joan stepping in, completely ignoring the delinquent. "You figured something out?"

  "Tara did. It has something to do with the bird sounds. It's leading her somewhere, maybe the lighthouse."

  Tara had been too focused on tracking the source of the sound to respond the the chatter next to her. Although Raif appeared ready to hurl either insults or fists in my direction, the presence of Joan seemed to keep him at bay.

  As we approached the steep incline toward the lighthouse, Tara stopped.

  "Not the lighthouse. We were wrong. It's somewhere down there." Tara pointed to an area directly below the lighthouse, where the cliffs met the shoreline.

  Before any of use could respond, she turned toward the new destination and blocked us out as she focused on the surrounding noise. The best I could do is follow quietly with the others as we waited to see if Tara's theory bore fruit.

  The beach all but disappeared, leaving us walking a tight rope between the bottom of the cliff edge and the steady rhythm of waves splashing against our feet. Somehow crows still filled the area, flying overhead and perching on even the smallest ledges of the cliff face. I didn't want to imagine how much crow crap I had in my hair or on the bottom of my shoes. My mind drifted to fantasies of washing my hands, scrubbing my hair, and putting on clean clothes. I get that most single guys would imagine very different bathing fantasies when in the company of two beautiful women, but my priorities were elsewhere.

  After an excruciating fifteen minutes of dealing with shuffling along the bottom of the cliffs, Tara arrived at her destination.

  A solid cliff wall.

  "Are you sure this is the spot?" I prodded, hoping to find we hadn't just wasted our time. I was less frustrated and more worried about how Raif would react when he finally got alone with Tara after all of this. He definitely didn't seem happy.

  "Actually it's on the other side of this door, but I don't know how to get inside."

  Raif burst into mocking laughter, turning to me with nothing but brutal condescension. "You're just now finding out that she's pretty useless. Aside from being a pretty face and an okay musician, there's nothing else to her. You just had to learn the hard way, loser."

  "Tara, what do you mean? You do realize that's not a door, right?" I tried to ignore Raif, hung up on Tara's misclassification of the surroundings.

  "But it is a door. See?" She knocks on the face of the cliff as if it would prove anything to us. It did not. After a moment, she realized that we still weren't following. "Knock on it yourself, it's hollow."

  Following her advice, I reached out and knocked on the face of the cliff in front of me. She was right, it felt more like knocking on a metal industrial door than on solid rock.

  "Tara, have I told you you're a genius recently?"

  "Put it back in your pants numb nuts. Unless you want to find out how it feels to drown in a couple inches of water." Raif snapped at me for complimenting Tara's brilliance. The icy stare from Joan caused Raif to backpedal slightly, but not very convincingly. "Accidentally, of course. We're a team, so I'd never purposefully harm a hair on your annoying little head, Clay... Buddy."

  Fresh off her self appointed duty as my bodyguard, Joan took to inspecting the cliff face. "It seems to be about ten feet wide and who knows how tall. And if you look at the sand, it's hard to see because the tide has washed away most of it, but you can see a little bit of where the door slid. I think it opens like a garage door. But I don't really see a way inside."

  Since I already knew the answer regarding Joan and myself, I turned to our other two party members, "Do either of you have an ability that would open up a door, or maybe unlock a door?"

  Tara responded by shaking her head, but Raif simply sneered in my direction.

  "Raif, answer him." Joan was very quickly losing her patience with Raif, although she didn't have the indicative red highlight, I was fairly certain it would reappear if our spikey haired friend kept pushing it.

  "No, I don't have an ability that can open doors." He stuck his tongue out at me, as if he had some reason to celebrate the fact that he was completely useless.

  "I mean, we could probably try to force it open, but I'd be worried about..." I started to problem solve before Raif cut me off with a cocky attitude.

  "You didn't let me finish loser." He pulled out his journal, acting like we should all bow down before his greatness. "I don't have an ability that can open doors. BUT... I do have an ability that can teleport us inside a locked area."

  My eyes opened wide. Although I didn't look to verify, I'm sure Joan's did the same.

  "You're serious? That would be really helpful." I eagerly responded, completely ignoring his pompous demeanor.

  "So what are you gonna give me to use it? You don't expect me to do it for free, do you?"

  Did I ever mention that I hated him? Because I really really hated him.

  This would have been the perfect moment for me to say something tough and force his hand. But you know that thing that I've said about not being the hero of this story? Yeah, Joan stepped in. She didn't even cut me off before I could speak, I doubt I would have ever snapped back with something tough or clever. I probably would have tried to bribe him to do the ability.

  "Right now you have two extra people who have pulled pretty much all of the weight in solving this mystery. While we were investigating and putting our lives on the line, you were rotting in a jail cell because you hold your liquor worse than my three-year-old niece."

  "You have a three-year-old niece? And why do you give her alcohol? That's probably not a good thing to do." Because that's the part I clung onto in the middle of her speech.

  "Shut up, Clay. Focus. I'm in the middle of something." Joan shot down my inquiry bluntly before diving back into her berating of Raif. "Part of our opening monologue by that annoying person claiming to be a god was that if we don't complete the investigation, everyone dies. As much as you hardly qualify as a human, that still includes you."

  I'd assumed that was the case, but confirmation that god said we'd die if we didn't solve the mystery was news to me.

  Joan continued, "I think the least you could do is use your ability to get us inside. Unless you really want to die here."

  "It's not like I believe any of this crap... But whatever." Raif grumbled under his own breath.

  "So how does it work?" I asked, trying to figure out anything I possible could.

  Raif let out a very dramatic and over-the-top sigh. "It's called B&E. I can cast it on everyone. We'd get teleported inside. I know it works because Tara and I used it earlier when we..." He stopped. A quick glance to Tara showed a very uncomfortable look on her face. "It works, that's all you need to know."

  Joan and I met eyes, unsure of just how much we should pry beyond Raif's explanation. For assurance, I turned to Tara who looked downward to avoid eye contact but nodded weakly. I'll admit, it wasn't the most comforting response, but I trusted that the spell at least did what Raif implied.

  "Fine. We don't really have any other options. I vote we let Raif use his ability on all of us. Any objections?" I offered my vote, not overly confident but after the time we spent following clues to this point, I really didn't want to walk away with nothing.

  "I'm with Clay. I'm confident Raif knows what will happen if he's lying, right?" The red outline appeared around Joan as she stared daggers into Raif.

  He nervously nodded, losing any cockiness from before. "I mean, it's pretty clear I don't really have a choice so Tara and I are in."

  "Tara? What's your actual vote?" Joan inquired to Tara even though she never stopped staring daggers at the person who tried to answer for Tara.

  "I'm okay. Raif already said..." She mumbled, still looking at the ground.

  I was sure my face showed the effects of the bad taste that interaction left in my mouth. If I had more confidence that my words would have an effect, I might have spoken up. Instead, "Alright, so it's unanimous. I'm ready whenever everyone else is."

  Raif lined the three of us in front of him. I stood between Joan and Tara. With a look of boredom, the spikey haired delinquent extended a hand toward me. "B&E!"

  I could immediately feel the effects of his ability. My body tingled, and the world seemed to swirl around me.

  —-

  The area on the other side of the door was almost completely pitch black. Aside from a few dim candles spread out over the massive space, there was no other source of light. It was hard to tell from where I stood, but the space I now inhabited was roughly the size of a large warehouse. There were what appeared to be houses or some other kind of structure sprinkled throughout the space. My initial investigation immediately came to a halt for a couple of reasons.

  First, a quick glance to my right and left showed no signs of my other party members. If they were here with me, they had to be somewhere far away from my current location.

  And second, it's hard to continue an investigation when a life-changing message appears in front of your eyes.

  B&E has been cast on +h3 /\/u11.

  Congratulations: B&E has successfully allowed you to infiltrate the target structure.

  Warning: You have failed the skill check for stealth.

  All residents of structure have been notified of your presence.

  I didn't have to guess what the second half of the message meant because my Read the Room ability gave me a pretty good idea.

  In the five meter radius that my ability covered, more than twenty familiar red highlights appeared. They were familiar, because I recognized them as the same size and shape of the Deep One we had encountered the night before. The twenty figures were enough to instill complete and utter terror, but the sound of countless other figures shifting and turning in my direction filled the entire space. If I was lucky, there might only have been a couple hundred Deep Ones surrounding me.

  There was only one possible way I could get out of this situation. I looked for the safest possible spot and utilized my Pathfinder ability. Soon a yellow line would have helped show me the path to at least temporary safety. Except...

  Error

  Unable to use Pathfinder at this time.

  Pathfinder is unable to find a non-lethal route.

  Maybe it was just the specific spot I tried to reach with the ability. I desperately looked for another location... Then another... Then another...

  Error

  Error

  Error

  The same message over and over. Pathfinder is unable to find a non-lethal route.

  The Deep Ones started moving in my direction.

  I hoped Joan and the others weren't in here with me. That way I would be the only one to have to die. At least they would live on for a little while longer.

  Error

  Error

  Error